


what if we ruined it all (and we loved like fools)

by folignos



Category: Hockey RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-03
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-28 00:30:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2712386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/folignos/pseuds/folignos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James isn’t surprised when he gets the call from his agent about the trade.</p><p>[Or, "I didn't say I love you to hear it back. I said it to make sure you knew."]</p>
            </blockquote>





	what if we ruined it all (and we loved like fools)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bropunzeling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bropunzeling/gifts).



> it's jess' birthday!!!
> 
> so i wrote pining paulie/nealer because i'm a horrible friend, apparently.
> 
> title from lauren aquilina's fools (aka the paulie/nealer theme song)
> 
> come find me on [tumblr](http://toewses.tumblr.com) for more hockey nonsense!

James isn’t surprised when he gets the call from his agent about the trade.

Still fuckin’ sucks, though.

He turns his phone off and proceeds to get blackout drunk at Nisky’s wedding reception until Paulie drags him to a table and forces water into him.

‘Nashville, Paulie,’ he says, bleakly, between glasses. ‘ _Nashville_.’

Paulie just looks at him blankly. ‘What about Nashville?’ he asks.

‘It’s so _far away_ ,’ James says, listing to one side.

‘From Minnesota?’ Paulie looks like he doesn’t understand anything. In James’ defence, he’s being perfectly clear, barely even slurring his words.

‘From _Pittsburgh_.’

‘I guess so?’ Paulie says.

‘I don’t want to go to Nashville,’ James says.

Paulie sighs suddenly. ‘Come on, buddy. Let’s get you home.’

-

James wakes up to another glass of water, two Advil, and a ringing phone.

‘Hey, Mom,’ he says, pinching at the bridge of his nose. Definitely should have picked up the Advil first. He swallows them, chases them with a long mouthful of water.

‘Your father just saw the news, why didn’t you tell us?’

‘I didn’t get a chance,’ he lies. ‘I was at the wedding when I got the call, then my phone died.’

‘I’m sorry, James,’ she says.

‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘I’ve been expecting it all summer. It’ll be a good opportunity for me.’ He sounds like a press release, or a soundbite. Suddenly, he doesn’t want to be having this conversation. ‘I have to go, mom. I’ll call you later.’

He hangs up halfway through her saying his name. When he looks up, he sees Paulie standing in the doorway.

‘So. Nashville,’ he says. He sounds exhausted.

James twists his lips. ‘Looks like.’

‘I would have gotten drunk too,’ Paulie says. He’s trying for a joke, but it falls a little flat. ‘Drink the rest of your water.’

James sips at it. It’s icy cold, hurts his head, but clears the fog of all the wine he’s drunk last night.

‘I don’t even like wine,’ he says, scowling into his glass.

Paulie laughs. ‘Someone should tell drunk you that.’ He comes into the room properly. ‘Do you want breakfast?’

James’ stomach turns and rumbles at the same time. ‘I… think so?’

Paulie laughs again. ‘Well, when you decide, come downstairs. I made pancakes. With raspberries.’

‘Marry me,’ James says.

Paulie’s face twitches, but he says nothing.

Breakfast is quiet, except for the tiny man jumping up and down inside James’ head. He sits at Paulie’s breakfast bar and eats until he doesn’t feel like he’s going to fall over.

‘So,’ Paulie says, drying his hands on a cloth. ‘Wanna talk about it?’

‘No,’ James says, scowling into his coffee mug.

‘Wanna pretend it’s not happening?’ Paulie asks then, voice softening.

James thinks about it. ‘...Maybe,’ he says, looking up. Paulie’s face is blank, but his eyes are impossibly sad. Maybe James is still a little drunk.

‘We can do that,’ Paulie says.

-

They drive back to Pittsburgh together in Paulie’s completely unnecessary truck.

‘You’re a millionaire,’ James says. ‘Millionaires shouldn’t have the same pick up truck they were driving when they were seventeen.’

‘I like my truck,’ Paulie says serenely. ‘Chirp me when you actually learn how to drive.’

James pouts and fiddles with the radio the entire drive home.

Or, he guesses it’s not home anymore, really.

-

He hires someone to pack his place up for him, and stays at Paulie’s for the rest of summer.

Sid stops by once, with a number on a piece of paper, because apparently Sid lives in a time before cellphones.

‘I told Shea I’d give you his number. You should let him know when you’re in Nashville, he’s excited to welcome you to the team.’

There’s a vaguely traumatised look in Sid’s eyes like he knows exactly how much Shea Weber likes welcoming people to the team. James suspects there are bear hugs involved.

James takes the piece of paper and says nothing. He and Paulie still aren’t really talking about it.

He pins it up on Paulie’s fridge with a fish shaped magnet and forgets about it.

-

He gets exactly one text from Geno, out exploring the wilds of Russia. It just says _(((( lazy_.

James texts him back a lot of sad faces, and an _i know, buddy_.

-

Paulie makes him dinner the night before he’s set to fly out to Nashville. His stuff is sitting in storage down there, waiting for him to find a place.

They eat at the kitchen island instead of on the couch, like normal, and Paulie doesn’t look up from his plate the entire time. They drink entirely too much beer, and James falls asleep on the couch, feet in Paulie’s lap.

He wakes up with a headache and cold feet, and Paulie rattling around in the kitchen. James’ flight is in four hours.

‘I’m going to get a cab to the airport,’ he says, as soon as he’s in the kitchen. Paulie looks up from where he’s beating eggs. His glasses are slightly wonky, and his hair is sticking up all over.

‘I can drive you,’ he says, but James shakes his head, sits at the island.

‘It’s okay. I’m gonna get the cab. I already called.’

He doesn’t want to change his mind later on.

He also doesn’t want to say goodbye to Paulie in public. Doesn’t want to say goodbye at all, but, well.

It’s happening.

 

Paulie makes him an omelette, with ham and mushrooms and corn. James looks down at it and feels his stomach turn.

-

The cab arrives too soon. James stands in the doorway of Paulie’s house helplessly and looks at him. Paulie’s face is carefully blank. It’s the same expression he wears after a bad game.

James drops his duffel and pulls Paulie into a hug, buries his face between shoulder and neck. He can feel Paulie’s hands warm on his back through the thin cotton of his shirt.

‘Gonna miss you,’ he says. He feels Paulie’s long exhale across his neck.

‘I’ll see you next season, buddy,’ Paulie says, and pulls away. James has to force himself to let go. The taxi driver blasts his horn.

‘Yeah,’ James says. ‘See you next season.’ He hopes he doesn’t sounds as hollow as he feels.

-

James loses his phone on his third day in Nashville.

He remembers the text from Shea inviting him out with some of the guys. He remembers the first three or four beers, he remembers the shots, he remembers someone calling him a cab.

He wakes up in a strange bedroom with pale sheets and the worst hangover he’s ever had. His phone is nowhere to be found.

He pads into the hall slowly. He can hear someone on the phone downstairs.

‘I can hear him now. Sounds like he’s up and about. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure thing, Webs. Yeah.’

James goes into the kitchen and finds one of the guys he met last night, Richie, he thinks, chopping vegetables with his phone wedged between shoulder and ear. He glances up at James and grins.

‘Speak of the devil. I gotta go, Webs. Yeah, I’ll see you later.’ He hangs up, slips his phone into his back pocket. ‘Hey, kid.’

‘Have you seen my phone?’ James asks, coming further into the kitchen. He realises with a shock that it’s laid out almost exactly like Paulie’s, with the island in the middle, and dark wooden counters everywhere, and a giant bowl of fruit in the middle of the island.

Richie follows his line of sight and tells him to help himself. ‘But uh, no, no phone. You must have left it somewhere, sorry man.’

James sighs, and picks an orange out of the bowl.

‘Webs says you’re staying in some hotel,’ Richie says, while James sets in on peeling his orange. He nods. ‘I have a spare room,’ Richie says. James looks up at him.

‘You just met me last night,’ he says.

Richie shrugs, and crunches on a slice of pepper. ‘We’re on the same team.’

James goes back to his fruit. There’s a small pile of peel in front of him. He never was able to peel it off in one piece, like Sid does.

‘I can charge you rent, if it makes you feel better,’ Richie offers, piling the peppers and onions into a frying pan.

James stares hard at the segment of orange he’s just separated, and then looks up at Richie, who’s paying very particular attention to his pan of vegetables. ‘Thanks,’ he says.

Richie shrugs, stirs his pan. It’s making a very satisfying sizzling sound. ‘I remember being new to a city.’

James nods. He remembers getting to Pittsburgh and living in a hotel for a month and a half. It fucking sucked.

Richie takes the pan off the heat and puts another on, starts making eggs. James is reminded sharply of Paulie’s hangover pancakes. He finishes his orange and reaches for another one without thinking.

Richie nudges it away from him and puts a plate in front of him with a warm corn tortilla. ‘Help yourself,’ he says. ‘I made way too much, as per. You can be my portion control.’

James piles his plate high and doesn’t think about the bell peppers in the omelette Paulie made the morning of his flight.

-

Living with Richie is easy. They're roughly the same age, they get on well, Richie thinks James' inability to do anything is endearing as hell.

It’s like living with Paulie again, really. Sometimes living with Richie is the hardest thing.

Paulie hasn’t texted him since before he lost his phone. He’d managed to get his old number on his new phone, and collect most of his contacts back, but nothing from Paulie.

-

Richie has a calendar on his kitchen wall with every Preds game marked. James circles the Penguins game next month in red marker.

After a second of thought, he marks the February game too. Richie doesn't comment.

-

He scores his first goal in Predators yellow. It's soon enough in the season that he's still looking around for Geno, for Paulie. It feels wrong to be fistbumping a line of guys he still barely recognises.

Webs grabs him by the helmet and shakes his head, grinning.

Richie whacks him on the back when he gets back to the bench. Everyone around him is thrilled. It’s weird being on a team where winning is still exciting and new.

They go out afterwards, and he and Richie bow out early, go home and watch terrible reality TV while Richie makes extravagant post-win smoothies. James’ life is really surreal, sometimes.

-

He breaks after a while, and he asks Sid for Paulie’s number.

Drafts a half dozen texts and doesn’t send them.

He doesn’t know why he doesn’t. He wishes he knew why Paulie hasn’t been texting him.

-

The Pittsburgh game sneaks up on him. James hates every second of it.

Paulie doesn’t even look at him the entire game, or if he does, James misses it. Paulie checks him early in the game, slamming him up against the boards. James gets the wind knocked out of him a little, but that’s hockey.

He tries to go after him at the end of the first, gets as far as saying his name and pulling at his jersey, and then the refs get involved, separating them. ‘You don’t understand,’ James says, but they shuffle him off down his own tunnel anyway.

Paulie hadn’t even broken his stride across the ice.

James gets mad in the second period. Worse in the third. He breaks his stick in the locker room afterwards.

There’s a message from Geno on his phone, just a row of sad faces, and another one from Sid saying _Sorry for the hit_.

Nothing from Paulie.

Fuck.

He goes out for drinks with Sid and Geno, but he only ends up staying for a couple. They’re buzzed off the win, and they think they’re being subtle about it, but they’re so happy that it’s exhausting to James. He leaves a couple of bills on the table and mumbles his excuses.

He rolls around in bed until four am, and then reaches for his phone. Dials Paulie’s number before he even really thinks about it, and then hits the red button immediately.

 _I’m sorry_ , he texts.

Twenty minutes later, he gets a reply, a single question mark.

 _Figured I must have done something wrong for you to hit me like that_.

 _Yeah, you had the puck_. There’s a pause, and then another text arrives. _If it helps, I think I came off worse than you. I’m too old to be checking people_.

James laughs, and rolls onto his side, taking his phone with him.

-

And so it goes.

James texts Paulie stupid things about his day, pictures of Richie’s cooking, bullies him into getting snapchat so he can send him ten second videos of Webs’ dog freaking out in the sprinkler system.

When Paulie sends him a post game selfie in December with half his tooth missing, James tweets it, and then the screencaps of Paulie’s irate texts about it afterwards.

 _You’re a terrible friend_ , Paulie texts eventually. James sends him a smiley face in reply.

It’s… odd, James thinks. They talk all the time. Because of the time difference, and how Paulie is generally a more functional human being than James, he’s always awake before him, and James frequently wakes up to good morning texts, or two second Snapchats of the inside of Paulie’s fridge (James is not convinced Paulie understands Snapchat. At all.)

It still feels like something doesn’t quite fit right. Maybe it’s just because of the distance, but James feels like he and Paulie are deliberately not talking about something.

-

Paulie gets a cat.

She’s tiny and grey and apparently she hates everyone. Paulie skypes him with red slashes across one cheek.

James can’t help but laugh. Paulie tries scowling at him, but his face collapses into a grin anyway.

‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘She even hates Geno.’

‘Bullshit,’ James declares. ‘Every animal loves Geno, he’s like the horse whisperer, but for like, everything. The animal whisperer.’

Paulie laughs. ‘It’s not my fault I accidentally bought the literal cat of Satan himself. She’s cute.’

‘She’s deadly,’ James says. ‘What if they get infected and your face falls off?’

‘Do you have any idea how modern medicine works? Or like, faces?’

‘Don’t need to,’ James says cheerfully. ‘I don’t have a devil cat trying to kill me. I just get Dug thinking he’s a lapdog because Webs hasn’t bothered teaching him different.’

Paulie laughs again, but it’s quieter than before. More distant. James wonders what he said wrong.

-

It’s February far too soon.

He texts Paulie on the way to the rink, knows he’ll probably already be there, cutting sticks or getting his skates sharpened or in the weight room. Paulie calls him an idiot and tells him to stop by the equipment room after skate.

Consol still feels too familiar. He doesn’t want to step on the ice at morning skate, he’s worried he won’t want to get off at the end of it.

Paulie’s alone in the equipment room when James gets there, hair still damp. ‘Hey,’ he says, softly. Paulie looks up, and grins.

‘Hey, you made it off the ice in the end then?’ James pulls a face.

‘Yeah, I had to be talked out of staying there forever, though.’ He drops onto the chair in the corner that he used to sit on and bug Sid when he was cutting sticks. ‘I miss this place.’

Paulie looks at his hands, and says nothing.

‘I miss you,’ James says, suddenly, recklessly.

Paulie looks angry, all of a sudden. ‘Don’t,’ he says. ‘Not again.’

James stops. ‘I… again?’

Paulie opens his mouth, and then shuts it. He looks confused. ‘You don’t remember,’ he says, eventually.

‘Remember what?’ James feels like he lost his grip on this conversation a long time ago.

Paulie does something on his phone, and tosses it over. James holds it to his ear slowly.

‘ _Paulie… Paulie… fuck. I fuckin’, I miss you. I fuckin’, I fuckin’ love you, Paulie_.’

‘Oh my god,’ James says. ‘Paulie.’

Everything suddenly makes a lot of sense. He should have known. He really, really, should have known.

‘I called you back, after that.’ Paulie’s still looking at his hands. ‘You didn’t pick up. And then you texted me, out of the blue, after the game?’

‘I lost my phone,’ James says. ‘In the club. I had no idea I’d called anyone.’ He pauses. ‘Least of all you. I wouldn’t...’ He waves his hands helplessly. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘That you’d called me.’

‘That I felt that way.’ He looks up at Paulie, who’s watching him carefully. ‘You always told me drunk me was smarter than sober me.’ The joke falls flat to him, but it gets an almost-smile out of Paulie. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, echoing that first text after the game.

Paulie’s face gets a little softer.

‘I’m an idiot,’ James says.

Paulie’s lips twitch. ‘A little bit,’ he says, slowly.

‘Forgive me?’ James asks, hopefully. ‘We can forget I said it, it’s okay.’

‘I... miss you too,’ Paulie says, determinedly. The tips of his ears are very red.

‘Um,’ James says. ‘Okay. Do you mean that you miss me, or do you--’

‘No,’ Paulie says, almost interrupting him. ‘I mean, yeah. But also the other thing.’

‘You sound like me,’ James says.

Paulie flushes pinker. ‘Shut up.’

James pauses. ‘Can we...’

‘After the game,’ Paulie says. ‘Come to mine.’

‘I, okay,’ James says. He stands up, and he’s about to reach for the door handle to leave, when Paulie’s hand dips under his chin and tugs him forward into a soft kiss, just a couple of seconds.

‘We okay?’ Paulie asks. He has to look up slightly.

James presses his thumb to his lower lip. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Yeah. We’re okay.’


End file.
